Graham’s Footsteps Graced Goodhart’s Stage!

tech bourrees

There are always ancestral footsteps behind me, pushing me, when I am creating a new dance, and gestures are flowing through me.

(Blood Memory)

When I began my research for Mawr Steps I gathered information on Martha Graham, her dancers, her technique, her body of work, the politics that this dance referenced, etc. But I also sought to learn something about the history of dance at Bryn Mawr College. Because it is not just Graham’s legacy that this project is involved with, of course, it is our legacy too.

I was surprised – and incredibly excited – to find that these two great legacies have been intertwined for decades!

Below are pages from the March 1, 1939 edition of Bryn Mawr’s College News.

(Here is a PDF version of the paper in its entirety.)

The review continued on Page 3

The review continued on Page 3

Front page: "Martha Graham Evokes History In New Dance"

Front page: “Martha Graham Evokes History In New Dance”

 

 

 

 

 

 

(via BMC Special Collections Repository)

 

 

The front page headline reads: “Martha Graham Evokes History In New Dance,” reported from Goodhart Auditorium on February 23, 1939. So, 75 years ago Martha Graham herself performed on the same stage that Steps in the Street will be performed on tomorrow and Saturday nights. What’s more – Graham was performing works at Bryn Mawr (in 1939) created during the same period of her career as Steps (1936).

The serendipitous parallels are truly uncanny.

 

Preparing For Powerful History…

Dancing "Steps" on Goodhart's stage during the tech rehearsal today

Dancing “Steps” on Goodhart’s stage during the tech rehearsal today

“We have seen strange things today,” said the big bull to the others of his herd. “The man we trampled to death is again alive… Now…we shall teach you our own dance and song, which you are never to forget.” For these were to be the magical means by which the buffalo killed by the people in the future would be restored to life…

(Myths To Live By)

The dance that is being passed from buffalo to man is one that creates life by recreating death – that is, by performing a once-lived experience. This process of dynamic recreation is multidimensional: it necessitates an engagement with history; a negotiation between then and now.The performance then provides a portal, a brief opportunity for unrestricted travel, to disparate moments in space and time.

An apparently ghostly moment during last night's tech rehearsal

An apparently ghostly moment during tech rehearsal